Stroud Township mom's reality TV debut was one adventure too many

The reality show television crew had no idea the mother of the bride was having a horror-movie moment in her hotel bathroom.

CAMILO H. SMITH

The reality show television crew had no idea the mother of the bride was having a horror-movie moment in her hotel bathroom.

Blood was everywhere.

Jill Barton of Stroud Township had come to Vieques Island expecting a tropical wedding, but a bleeding ulcer was threatening to cut her television debut short. She had always wanted to be an actress, but more importantly, having the opportunity to see her youngest daughter get married — on television no less — was slipping away.

Barton was rushed to the nearest hospital, across a patch of sea on the mainland of Puerto Rico. It was May 8. Later that day, she was on her way back to the hotel on Vieques.

The worst was averted. She would be back in time to get ready for the weekend wedding.

Then, as quickly as it happened before, it started again. The Pocono Medical Center nurse was spitting up blood.

It was back to the hospital.

On the helicopter that would whisk her from the tiny island, she could only think of one thing: She just wanted to be around a little longer.

Barton and her daughters are no strangers to Vieques. The island paradise, with its complicated history as a U.S. Navy training location, is known for its wild horses and sandy beaches.

But for Barton, 59, the island has long been a familiar place. She moved there after she graduated from Stroudsburg High School in 1972.

Her mother, the late Carol S. Mackin, was asked to take over managing the Sportsmen's House, a resort and local watering hole on the island that was owned by her boss at the time.

The little woman who couldn't make a cocktail asked her daughter to come along.

"Jill, you've got to make this mixed drink for somebody," Barton remembers her mom saying. Barton was known back then as Jill Borheady. She met her first husband on the island. Of the 300 or so Marines stationed there, she jokes, she married the first one she met.

She left and moved to Connecticut to start a family.

Barton's mother would leave the island eight years later to tend to her sick parents in Stroudsburg. But the family's connection to the island would last for decades, and came to the fore again when it was time for Barton's daughter, Erica, to plan her wedding to Mike Ackerson.

Erica, also a graduate of Stroudsburg High School, picked the island with memories of her family's connection to it. When she looked for wedding planners, there was only one, Sandy Malone's "Weddings in Vieques."

Little did Erica know that she would be asked to participate in the TLC channel's "Wedding Island" reality show that was set for production.

Forty-five guests were invited, and after negotiations that included how much access producers would have to the nuptials and its planning, a reality show camera crew became part of the deal for Barton's May 11 wedding.

It was Malone's connections and quick thinking that got Barton the help she needed in those tense moments when she didn't know whether she would live or die. Malone was able to get Barton airlifted in the governor's chopper to the hospital.

But through all the chaos, Barton wasn't really scared. Barton has been in tense situations before.

Not just because she's been a nurse for 18 years, but because she's been on a hijacked plane.

On May 6, 1972, when a man with a gun sitting in the seat behind her had hijacked her Miami-bound plane, Barton kept her cool. She was one of two Stroudsburg women on that flight that safely landed in Washington, D.C., during the heyday of domestic plane hijackings in the 1970s.

The only thing that really worried Barton while she was in the hospital was not being there for the next generation.

"You just want to be here for the future grandchildren," Barton said. There were two more return trips to the intensive care unit to have her ulcer clamped.

She was happy, but beat.

A day later, Barton was in the Caribbean ocean for hours playing with her grandchildren. "It couldn't have been any better," she said.

The wedding went off without a hitch, but for Barton, with aspirations of stardom at one point in her life, things could have gone a little better.

"For my TV debut, it wasn't what I envisioned," she said.

"Wedding Island" will premiere on the TLC channel with a sneak-peek episode at 10 tonight. Follow-up episodes will air at 10 p.m. every Thursday. Episode 106, featuring Jill and Erica Barton, airs Aug. 15.